As thousands of activists and scientists around the world gather to March for Science, Bill Nye has a U.S. Constitution lesson for Donald Trump that proves he must advance scientific causes.
In an interview on MSNBC’s AM Joy, Nye said that it explicitly states in the Constitution that the U.S. government must “promote the progress of science and useful arts,” something the Trump administration isn’t even close to upholding.
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Nye had a reminder for the Trump administration:
I just want to remind the administration that science is political. It is inherently political like everything else … It’s in the U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, to promote the progress of science and useful arts. And my interpretation of the expression ‘useful arts’ is engineering. In those days, it would be architecture, city planning, designing of the drainage systems, sewage systems, and communications systems. This is all in the U.S. Constitution … That’s what enables innovation, and if our country stops innovating, it will not be able to compete worldwide.
Nye said that solutions to battling climate change are realistic and doable if the United States simply puts resources toward the effort and decides to act.
“We could get to 80 percent renewables in the next 15 years, we could 100 percent renewable in the next 30 years and we wouldn’t have to have a military on the other side of the world protecting oil fields so that we could get our fossil fuels here in North America,” he said.
Once again, the biggest hurdle in battling climate change isn’t the existence of feasible solutions – those already exist.
The problem, at least in the United States, is Republicans in Congress and now the White House – especially Trump, who believes climates change is a hoax – who continue to deny that the climate crisis is happening in the first place, despite the overwhelming evidence.
Donald Trump isn’t just shirking his constitutional responsibility to advance scientific innovation, but he’s putting at risk the only planet we have.
Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
